Macworld Keynote

Steve Jobs introduces the Macbook Air. This is the link to the full length video of macworld 2008 keynotes:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/keynote/

Google's Android Surfaces

An interesting article in USA Today talks about the demo of the first Android phone. Good read for smartphone enthusiasts.

Bill Gates CES Keynote

Nothing new, downloadable shows and sales figures. But good to see Gates is still walking on his own.
As promised this is Bill Gates full length keynote presentation.

• 750K Stream
• 300K Stream
• 100K Stream

Amazing Techmeme Video

I check Techmeme more than I check my email, about 6 times a day. It is a great source for fresh tech news and tech blog rants. You really know whats going on on the technology scene when you look at techmeme. Even if you miss a day or two, you can always go back and see the front page as it was that day, just type the time (for example January 1st 2007 1:00 PM).

I found this video showing how the front page changes during 50 hours. Its amazing! I wish I created this website.

Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs: Round 2

It was exactly one year ago that I talked about the public speaking skills of the two most influential figures in the computer industry, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. It is time once again to keep a close eye on the technology news because of the eminent arrival of Consumer Electronics Show with Gates to present the Keynote, and Macworld where Jobs will take the center stage.

I will be watching both keynotes and will try to embed both videos here.

Earth to Mozilla!!

I was checking out my visitors trends (thanks to Google Analytics) and noticed I had a visit from someone at mountainview.mozilla.com!! I'm sure they came to read my Firefox feedback/rants, including the Full Page Zoom post below.

Whoever you are, FIX THE ZOOM :)

Firefox 3 Full Page Zoom: Good Idea Bad Excution

I was so excited about the full page zoom feature in Firefox 3. Even more excited about it than the new bookmarks. However, it turned out to be not what I expected. You see, I have a laptop with Ubuntu in the living room for casual browsing. The native screen resolution is 1920x1200 which makes the websites we visit very tiny and unreadable, although very crisp.

To fix the problem, i tried to increase the font size in Firefox but that broke the design of almost all websites, rendering them unreadable and defeating the purpose to increase the font size in the first place. I also tried to reduce the resolution but the buttons and menus became huge and the Firefox interface took almost a third of the screen. And since we're no longer working in the native resolution of the screen, everything looks a little fuzzy. So I took the best of both solutions; increase the font slightly and decrease the resolution slightly. Now most websites are readable with very small changes in layout due to font size. Life is good. Its about to get better.

Enter Full Page Zoom. When I first heard about it I thought this will solve the problem. It basically increases the size of the whole page, not just the font. It lets you zoom in without breaking the layout of the page. Now I can switch back to full resolution and zoom in to make the site bigger to accompany my large resolution and keep everything crisp and clear and readable. And it works. But..

With this new feature, they (Firefox developers) introduced a new "feature." They call it site-specific preferences. Which basically means that you set your preferences for each site separately. This sounds like an okay feature but it wrecks my use of full page zoom. You see, every time I zoom in to one page and read it then visit a different site, the full page zoom returns to the default zoom and renders everything smaller. Then I have to zoom in again to read the next page and so on.

There is no way to configure any of these two features and no way to disable site-specific preferences. Maybe someone will write an extension? Maybe I will do it? Who knows, Always Zoom extension! (you read it here first). I hope this issue will be addressed before launch.

Update:
My post in Mozilla forums about this subject sparked a good discussion which eventually turned to two guys fighting about a totally different subject.

Microsoft Office for Linux?

Gizmodo has a preview for Microsoft Office for Mac. Now since it is clear Office is still in development for operating systems other than windows, why not port the software to Linux as well? I dont see myself using it in my Linux box (I use Google Docs and Open Office) but it may help convert some people over to Linux.

"Techy Title Here"

My good friend MBH started what I call a "too technical blog." He generally talks about Unix/Linux. Give him a visit: mbhtech.blogspot.com.

We Mourn the Death of Netscape

Netscape browser's development and support will stop on February 1st 2008. This will mark the end of the first "commercial" browser. I remember the first day I used the web was with Netscape. Internet Explorer was unheard of, and surely Firefox was not even an idea.

To the right is the old splash screen of Netscape 2. Seeing this picture reminds me of how slow my computer was at the time. It brings back lots of memories.

Read more about the death of Netscape Navigator.

Comments on Firefox 3 Beta 1

Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 1 is out and available to download. And guess what? I like it.


Good:

• Revamped bookmarks: with tags and one-click bookmarking using a Google-style star near the address bar. Double click the star to add tags to the new bookmark and edit title and location.
• Full-page zoom: Great for enlarging websites and read them comfortably without messing the layout. Try resizing the BBC News site in IE or FF2 and see the mess you're making, full-page zoom fixes that. Great for wide screens too, and my mom's laptop!!
• No more saving wrong passwords. They are saved after successfull login.
  

Bad (Note that it is still in beta and these will probably be fixed before RC1):

• HUGE memory footprint compared to Firefox 2 (and 1.5), even with only 2 tabs open. While writing this post my memory usage reached 770MB!!
  
• Revamped download manager looks nicer but the download speed text keeps changing places depending on the number of minutes remaining. you will know what I'm talking about when you try it.
  
• Delayed 2 months (and no promise on release date).

Don't download FF3 yet. This release is for developers and testers only. Keep using FF2.

Top 5 Requests for Google Reader

1. Collapsible Header
   

   Just like when pressing u collapses the left-hand links. Why can't we press h, for example, to collapse the space-wasting headers and give us more reading room? We don't need to stare all the time at Google Reader's logo, my email address, settings, help, and expanded/list views.
   

2. More than 2000 items for offline Reader
   

   You knew this was coming. You do not actually read all items in all the feeds you're subscribed to. I usually scan my feeds for interesting items to read so I skip a lot of items. Therefore, having 2000 items limit is somehow low and forces me to use some services like Yahoo Pipes to filter my feeds. However, automatic filtering is not a good idea because it may filter out things that you might find interesting.
   

3. Pre-fetch in offline Reader
   

   There is a noticeable delay when you try to open the next item in Google Reader offline mode. Prefetching next unopened item (or next five items even) and storing it in cache would totally eliminate this problem. And add an option in the settings page for prefetching while you're at it.
   

4. Podcasts in offline Reader
   

   When downloading the 2000 items to switch Reader offline, add a parallel progress bar to download enclosed mp3 files found in the downloaded items. This parallel bar can be canceled by the user and with a check box for "never download mp3 files again." Google's flash mp3 player can be configured to read from the locally stored mp3 file. This can be extended to video podcasts as well. Options to enable offline podcasts can be added to the settings page.
   

5. Enough with this Beta talk
   

   Google redefined "Beta" recently. So many Google services are so popular and stable yet they are marked as beta. I move to remove beta from Google Reader. It's perfectly stable and ready for prime time, folks, take my word for it!

New MTC ad (Black is in)

This is the new ad from MTC it just says "BLACK IS IN" it is rumered to be a reference to Blackberry. MTC will support blackberry in Kuwait just like they did in Bahrain.

How to change the product key for Microsoft Office 2007

This is direct from Microsoft's support website.


1. Close all Office programs.
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate and then click the following subkey:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Registration

4. Under the Registration subkey,

a. Right-click the DigitalProductID registry entry, click Delete, and then click Yes.
b. Right-click the ProductID registry entry, click Delete, and then click Yes.

5. Close Registry Editor.
6. Open an Office program, such as Microsoft Word. When you receive a message that prompts you for the product key, type the new product key, and then click OK.

Head to Microsoft's support page for full details.

Warhammer Online Interview

This is the English translation of an interview posted in the German website war-welten.de.

Frage: Buffbots were a huge problem in DAoC, how are you trying to prevent that in WAR?

Antwort: At first, there is no /stick command in WAR. You would actually need to play both characters in order to keep you buffed or even to follow your mainchar. Furthermore there are no traditional support-classes in WAR. The Warrior Priest, for example, is able to buff and heal but if he isn’t fighting himself he is not building up Righteous Fury. Without Righteous Fury his abilities are a lot less effective. This is also true for the shaman and his Waaagh.

Frage: Are you playing classical pen & paper roleplaying games yourself and how would you compare WAR to pen & paper games?

Antwort: I’ve played pen&paper games as long as I lived in Germany. I’ve even tried the Warhammer pen&paper game, but my group chose to play “Das Schwarze Auge”. But I’m playing the Warhammer tabletop game. I set up my second army and we’re playing every lunch break in the office. It’s hard to compare the tabletop with the MMO, but you’ll recognize a lot of things and feel at home. We’ve heavily based the MMO’s design on the original tabletop models. Everything from clothing to colors, every emblem and every tiny detail is based on the tabletop game. When you enter the world, you’ll instantly feel at home, if you know the Warhammer universe.

Frage: What is WAR offering for casual gamers?

Antwort: Warhammer is not exclusively designed for powergamers! WAR should be a game. I don’t want to goof on World of Warcraft, don’t get me wrong. It did much for the market itself. But it seems like everyone is thinking WoW invented the genre. Everyone is comparing everything to WoW, saying “uh that’s just in wow” which makes my hairs stand to the end. MMORPGs have a more than 10 year old tradition and we need to change the concepts to make them more suitable for beginners. I like complex games but you can’t make them to inaccessible. As a matter of fact you can do nearly everything solo in Warhammer, but it makes more sense to level in a group, which is a part of online gaming. As always, powergamers will progress faster and will be first to achieve a lot of higher content, but nevertheless a casual gamer will have a lot of things to do too and will see a lot of the things a powergamer will encounter.

Frage: Will there be different difficulty settings for groups?

Antwort: The mobs have their individual level which creates the difficulty itself. Then there will be mobs with special abilities and heroic mobs which you should avoid by running for your life, if you’re solo. The harder mobs will grant, of course, bigger rewards.